Endangered species … and other red herrings

Wild Chinook salmon are the most prolific, most widely adapted, most farmed salmon in the world, from Washington’s Columbia River, Canada, Alaska, Kamchatka, the Sakhalin Islands to Patagonia, Chile and New Zealand, healthy populations abound. Yet California authorities use this species to manipulate water rights, hamstringing agriculture so urban folk can wash their Audis.

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Wild Chinook salmon are the most prolific, most widely adapted, most farmed salmon in the world, from Washington’s Columbia River, Canada, Alaska, Kamchatka, the Sakhalin Islands to Patagonia, Chile and New Zealand, healthy populations abound. Yet California authorities use this species to manipulate water rights, hamstringing agriculture so urban folk can wash their Audis.

The grizzly and wolf populations from Romania, Russia and Mongolia to Alaska, Canada and the continental U.S., are listed as “least concern” by the IUCN (International Union of Conservation and Nature), yet our U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would like you to believe they’re endangered and, “need more habitat.” And there are hundreds of other examples.

The American Heritage dictionary defines an endangered species as, “a species in danger of extinction,” no more no less. So who is it exactly that determines this status for extinction? Who draws the “critical habitat” boundaries? The answer is any enviro-attorney paid to do so; there simply are no other equivalent forces of opposing perspective. Just follow the money; it’s no longer about species or the environment.

Since the Endangered Species Act of 1973, it’s been about government’s newfound ethos of manifest destiny because they can write their own dictionaries and make their own laws. The government and their NGO enviro-partners are simply taking our private property, water, public land, species by species, habitat by habitat, monument by monument, park by park, wilderness by wilderness.

So, we will have to settle for agents telling us, “Are you going to believe us, or your lying eyes?” until we shake down the royalty entrenched in Congress and develop and support countermeasures like the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Mountain States Legal Foundation and others.